P182 -- massive case airflow problem?

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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Lensman
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Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:15 am

Post by Lensman » Tue Sep 04, 2007 8:59 pm

MoJo wrote:Lensman, can't you remove the HDD bays to give you more empty 5.25" bays? It looks like you can remove them but I was not sure if you can still mount a fan after they are taken out.
After fiddling with the fan/grille mount on the HDD bays, I found that you can remove the front grille/fan assembly off of the HDD bays on the 900. After doing this, you can mount the resulting fan/grille back onto the case, leaving you with what I think is enough room to suspension mount drives. This looks like a viable option for quieting the 900.

MoJo
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Post by MoJo » Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:19 pm

Thanks ever so much for confirming that, Lensman. It just so happens that today I saw a Nine Hundred in a shop where they had done exactly that!

But now... water cooling or a Nine Hundred? A very difficult choice.

pdawg17
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Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2007 8:07 am

Post by pdawg17 » Wed Sep 05, 2007 2:23 pm

I have the p180 with revision 1.1...for kicks I put one of the tricools on low and placed it in the upper bay since my dvd burner was in the lowest of the four spots...it dropped my cpu temps 2-3C which is great...the amazing thing however is when I opened the front door of the case, within 3 minutes my cpu temps dropped 5C more! That's an amazing difference IMHO...I'd rather not keep the door open though so would having two intake fans get me closer to the effect of having the door open? I don't have extra fans so I'd rather ask here before spending more money...given the topic of this thread however, I have a feeling what I really need is a front door with an opening that lines up with the upper intake fan :(

MoJo
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Post by MoJo » Wed Sep 05, 2007 9:02 pm

Another fan will certainly help. The reason the temps drop when you open the door is that the single fan you do have is moving more air because there is less resistance. Having two fans will also move more air.

pdawg17
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Post by pdawg17 » Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:12 pm

Generally speaking, do downblowing HSFs not do as well with the p180/p182 cases? I'm just wondering if I should retire my Big Typhoon and get a Ninja/TR Extreme/Tuniq Tower...I'd want at least a 5C drop on load temps to make it worth it though...

MoJo
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Post by MoJo » Fri Sep 07, 2007 4:00 am

Downwards blowing HSFs are not worse in the P180 than any other case, although generally they perform less well than horizontal ones like the Ninja.

If you want a 5C temp drop, buy a Nine Hundred.

Wibla
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Post by Wibla » Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:54 am

CPU temps in my P182 setup drops by 3-5 degrees if i take off one of the 5.25" blocking plates without changing anything with fan speeds.. if I run all the fans at max and take off one or two 5.25" plates cputemps Core0/1 is at 40/35C with F@H running.. This with an U120E, Nexus 120mm fan, noname poorly applied silver grease from 2003 on an E6600 @ 3GHz...

So now I'm getting a Kama Bay, hopefully that will help temps and I might be able to turn the fans down even lower ;)

.. I should have been aware of it tho, as the upper chamber with one intake and two exhaust inherintly will be a negative pressure setup... sigh.

ronrem
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Post by ronrem » Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:44 pm

The "Quiet" Antecs focus on damping and restricting noise---and on a rig with a rather cool CPU/GPU---work well. They do NOT appear to do well AT ALL on a "Gamer" rig with an OC CPU + an 8800 or similar hot Vid card. The case for starters---is not very large. Volume means it takes more to build up heat. Volume also means a lot of stuff is not dragging/deflecting the airflow.

Antec...sensibly...does not let noise escape out the front----but the trade off----not much air enters either. Putting 2" feet on the case-cutting a hole behind the PSU and ducting an inlet toward the Vid card area should help a lot.

Another idea.....reverse the top + Rear fans and open up the floor even more,do a positive pressure where the floor area and side vents are passive exhaust outlets.

Or.....redo the top-get a 200 mm Antec fan and find a way to use it there,thogh I'd still look at some way to duct incoming air to that toaster oven vid card.

Finally.....hack away.....stick a Bigass 250 mm fan in the door-at 500 rpm.
Then you can skip the front inlet fan altogather. The ELEGANT way is to NOT cut the door-but pull it off and make it 2" or 2 1/2" thicker with an INNER panel to which the 250 mm is mounted. The original door and the panel on which the fan mounts become the large sides of a box structure. the small sides of the box are where the venting is-with the back and rear mostly open and minimal opening to the front
Your case gets wider by a few inches but the look does not change much.

Re-working the hinge-latch might take some cleverness but this would not be too hard to pull off.

You MIGHT find you want to have the top fan blow IN, the big fan blow in- and the rear fan be removed entirely.

The Thick door variation does let you still get the plus of Antec's sandwich construction and lets you have the well distributed Air-In that helps cool HDDs + Vid cards. Cheaper than a new case.

Lensman
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Post by Lensman » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:09 pm

If you're getting a new Q6600, make sure to get a G0 stepping. It's both generates less heat and can take higher temperatures. This allows you more room in letting it run a little hotter and your fans a little quieter.

miahallen
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Post by miahallen » Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:00 am

Just wanted to share my experience as well. I also noticed all of the issues mentioned in this thread. My goal was high performance first, but I also desired low noise. I'm using a total of 7 120mm fans all running on 12V (est. 1350RPM), for me it is still very quiet.

I have fitted a 120mm fan in the 3 unused 5.25" drive bays (there is also room for 3 suspended HDDs behind the fan), and I have one in the stock location as an intake in the middle.
Image

Then I have two exhaust fans in the main chamber, one in the stock location in the rear, and one in a custom slot blower down by the expansion slots. The top hole is blocked off. Then I have one fan on the Ninja (cooling the CPU), and one wedged in, in front of the 8800GTX directing cool intake air over the card. I have found this works very well! (The 7th fan is in my Enermax PSU)
Image

Currently my temps are as follows:

front door open - idle/load
CPU - 35/52
chipset - 32/33
GPU - 55/67 (fan @ 76%)

front door closed - idle/load
CPU - 37/57 - (+2/5)
chipset - 35/38 - (+3/5)
GPU - 58/70 (fan @ 80%) - (+3/3)

Image

What I would like to point out was that before I added the fan in front of my 8800GTX, my temps there were much higher. With the door closed, it would idle about 70C, and would reach 85C under load (fan @88%). The reason I'm stating fan speeds is because I have the fan ramp up according to GPU temp. See chart below:
Image

On top of everything, my rig is still quieter like this because the GPU fan does not ramp up as much as before (it's the noisiest fan in the system).

The biggest point to my post here is to show that my GPU temp increases (created when closing the door) are not as significant as before adding the fan by the GTX. Before, idle & load temps would increase 10C, just by closing the door. Now the increase is only about 3C. The CPU shows the biggest increase, but it's still at a very managable level.

My system is not "silent", but all I hear is a gentle rush of wind, very tolerable by my standards.

Otto69
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FWIW...

Post by Otto69 » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:35 pm

I just bought a 180P on sale w/ rebate, a Phantom 500 PSU, and moved my old system (1 gig mem, P4 2.4, BFG 7800 GS OC, 1 SATA drive) in. With that in mind:

1. the top and back stock tricools are too loud for me at the middle setting, but that's the minimum I seem to need for gaming on my setup.

2. I'm running a Nitrogon SST ??? passive, i.e. no fan, CPU cooler and Zalman fan shaped heat sink on my northbridge. So I rely on the case fans to exhaust head from the CPU and northbridge.

3. disk is in bottom section w/ stock tricool and low setting screwed to the middle frame, having removed the fan holder which wouldn't fit in easily with the Phantom 500

As I write this it's 73.6 F ambient, and 95-96 at the CPU and mobo internal. If I game that goes up, but it comes back down within several minutes after I exit the game. Thats with the front doors all closed and the filters in with no mods.

I've ordered quieter 120mm fans. Once I've played with this system enough I'll upgrade it, but I'd like to avoid going to watercooling. I think the lower chamber design of the 180 is excellent. However the upper chamber has some problems:

there's no lower or side exhaust around the graphics card, so air from the front is going to slam around the back and not be able to go anywhere much, if you have the case I have that has the rubber liquid cooled gaskets rather than the earlier ventilated area. Adding more fans up front gives more posive pressure but doesn't change this fact.

My next steps are to fab a thin sheet metal copper duct between my CPU heatsink and the back fan. But the issue of doing passive cooling with fan throughput of the graphics card is a problem. Could be only liquid cooling is the answer, but I'd hate to spend all that money and still have audible sound. FYI I'm running this in my room with no other noise sources. The middle setting of 2 tricool fans is "too loud" for me. Liquid with a passive heatsink would be ok but takes up LOTS of space, is expensive, and I'm not sure how great it is... Still, drawing upon my car mod experience, I'm wondering if using a large aluminum oil cooler as the radiator would help with a very low speed fan.

Finally, I don't buy this whole "bigger fans are quieter" thang. My old Xaser III w/ 7 80mm fans and Trueblue 480 PSU w/ 2 80mm fans was quiet...until the fan controller failed and I upgraded to a 7800 AGP card which has and ungodly loud fan. My later upgrade to an Ultra X2 PSU was very dissapointing (need to sell that) as the 1 fan was quite loud when it activated. Even the Ultra fan powered CPU cooler was pretty darned quiet in retrospect. With larger fans the air passing alone is noisy, and the tricool fans are only 'quiet' on their lowest setting.


Regards,

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